The Proles, the Birds, and Winston
by Five Minutes Til Bedtime
Summary: Just once, Winston wanted to know what it felt like to sing.


Title: **The Proles, the Bird, and Winston**

Summary: Just once, Winston wanted to know what it felt like to sing.

Fandom: 1984

Word Count: 1,269

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><p>Just once, Winston wanted to know what it felt like to sing. He'd never done it before, not even, he believed, when he was a child. Why sing when his stomach made enough noise in its persistent demand for sustenance? There had been no Sunday church choir for him and the idea of him lulling his sister to sleep with a lullaby was laughable. He remembered his mother singing, and his sister, but him…<p>

He came to the flat alone. For once he had no desire to include Julia in this newest form of rebellion. Julia was a creature of the moment, of lust, or mindless rebellion. She wouldn't understand what he meant to do by singing. What it meant to him.

For the past weeks he had been listening to the red-armed woman croon out her soulful tune between mouthfuls of clothes pins. He thought that he remembered most of the words now, and the melody. And it wasn't really about the words but the action itself. The birds sang. The proles sang. Winston would sing as well.

He closed the door to the room and locked it, feeling a sort of red embarrassment on his face though he didn't know why. Then he went to the window and closed and locked that as well. He had hoped that the prole woman would be outside today but the streets below were empty.

With his environment secure, Winston was momentarily at a loss of how he was to do it. Should he sit down on the bed or remain standing? What was he to look at while he did it? What if he opened his mouth and nothing but a croak came out?

That thought was by far the most disturbing and he shook it from his mind the way a dog my bite at flees, aggressively but with no real chance of eliminating the infestation.

Eventually he decided to just stand and he cast his eyes on the painting of the church hanging on the wall. It was old and singing had been done in such places in the past, a fact he thought was suitable to his endeavor.

Having settled himself, there was nothing left to actually do but sing. He collected himself, running over the prole's deep voice in his head, before at last resolving himself and opening his mouth.

"_It was only a hopeless fancy,_

_It passed like an April day,_

_But a look and a word and the dreams they stirred_

_They have stolen my heart away!"_

The words that fell out of his mouth were just that. Words. He spoke the way that he might to anyone, mainly dull. Winston had never realized just how monotone his voice was – indeed the voice of anyone Party member – until that moment as he compared his listless speaking to the mournful calls of the red-armed woman.

He was doing something wrong. Obviously he was missing something. Shutting his mouth, he mentally rang through the prole's song. There was a noticeable distinction. While her voice moved up and down, in addition to faster and slower, his only did the later.

He tried again. This next attempt sounded better but also lacked something important. Something he wasn't grasping. His words followed the same pattern but they lacked something vital, something extra.

They lacked emotion.

It dawned on Winston then, that the first time he had heard the prole woman sing he had been amazed at the depth she managed to place in the foolish, Party song. The truth was, there were Party members that wrote songs and played them on the telescreens and radios, but all of them sounded like Winston – monotone, dull, unbelievable. The prole woman put conviction, but emotions, behind the shallow words.

That was the secret to singing.

This sudden realization caused hot shivered to run up Winston's spine. If he wanted to sing, he would have to put emotions behind the words. He would have dig beneath the bland, slightly optimistic façade he wore as a member of the Party and reveal the soft, chaotic man that lay beneath. It went against everything he had ever learned about self perseverance. If he did this, if he did this and someone heard and recognized his voice on the streets and reported it he would be killed. Somehow the thought of been killed for singing was somehow unimaginably worse that the idea of being killed for loving Julia or renting this room or even for joining the resistance.

But the birds sang, and the proles sang, and Winston wanted nothing more than to sing as well.

He started again. His voice came out as a whisper, but it was a whisper that was filled with something awesome and terrible and sad, sad, sad. With even this quiet tune he would be killed. He was going to be killed any way. He might as well sing louder.

His voice strengthened, the emotions grew. Soon, the sound of his song reverberated through out the room – loud, clear, powerful. Like his voice, Winston began to change. He too felt power flowing through him as he sang. His mind lifted itself of its fog and became clear. He now understood how a prole woman, worse off than even himself, could hold such sway over the hearts of others with a mere quiver of her voice.

He did not even sound that good. His voice was not always on key and it sounded starchy and rough. But he knew that anyone who heard him would understand him, that there was no hiding from the emotional torrent that exploded from his throat. This was real. This was power. This was what it meant to be free.

"_They sye that time 'eals all things,_

_They sye you can always forget;_

_But the smiles an' the tears acrorss the years_

_They twist my 'eartsing yet!"_

A sudden second voice joined in to his warbling solo. A sad, soulful, familiar voice that cut off in places and then picked up, mingling with the sound of his song - complimenting, challenging, understanding.

It was the red-armed woman. Some how, Winston knew at once that she had heard his song and had come out deliberately to join him. But he did not go to the window to see if her arms were truly empty, if it was the his voice that had drawn her out of her crumbling shack.

His eyes remained on the painting of the church. In his mind, he thought he could hear the sound of a choir, something from his youth, rising up in tune to he and the woman. He remembered the smell of his mother – sweat, coal, and strangely female – and the feeling of his sister's tiny, delicate hand in his own as he walked her down the street. He was there, in the painting, outside the church. There was no Party. There was no Big Brother. There was only Winston and the woman and the sound of their voices.

He sang and sang until the sun dipped behind the chimney's, casting the sky a deep, blood red. He sang even as the prole woman's voice cut off and did not continue. He sang until his voice grew hoarse and he could squeeze no more sound from it. He sang until his head was light and black spots danced across his eyes.

And when, at last, he fell silent, he unlocked the door and went home.

His walk was light. His smile, for once, unforced.

The bird sang, the proles sang, and Winston sang.

For one day, Winston had been free.


End file.
